Google Quietly Closes AdSense API to Small Sites

NewsCloud writes "Google has raised the required minimum traffic limit for publishers who wish to use its AdSense API to 100,000 page views per day. The AdSense API was introduced in March as a way for sites with user generated content to share advertising revenue with their members. Says Google, "This policy change will probably result in fewer developers going live and give us a chance to enhance our support resources and processes to more easily support a greater number of developers in the future...we hope to be able to lower it in the future as we become more efficient at supporting our developers!" Meanwhile, some publishers report waiting a month for their API usage to be approved. I take Google at its word for now but worry that small developers could be increasingly squeezed out of the mashup space if this were to become a trend."

Comments

Competition

[biocute]

Is there any competition to capture this <100K market?

Anyway, site developers can still share profits with contributing users, it's just less transparent and more tedious to work out the portions.

Re:Competition

[Captain Splendid]

Yeah, this is a non-story. As far as I can see, it just means the accounting burden shifts to the customer, right?

Re:The Road

[synx]

Maintaining a high level of customer service is an admirable goal. Why is this "evil"? Note, this isn't closing _adsense_ but the Adsense API.

Not ready for prime time?

[Vlaadimir]

This just shows that the AdSense network is not robust enough to handle the amount of users that wanted to participate. By limiting the program to users that have high volume, they maximize profit. This allows that devision of Google to fund R&D on how to improve the network to include more participants. This just appears to be an issues of cost.

Re:Not ready for prime time?

[cheater512]

Its not Adsense. Its a special form of adsense which would probably only be useful for larger sites anyway.

Basically its revenue sharing where you can share a % of your profit with your users.
Thats all they have limited.

Re:Not ready for prime time?

[king-manic]

But they can turn right around and blow a few million on a landing strip for their personal jets. Yeah Google is really short on cash.

You are aware that wasn't "Google" funded. It was the personal funds of the founders. The jets as well. Or should all CEO's limit themselves from spending their personal bank roll?

Slashdot quietly supports blogspam

[Anonymous Coward]

Stories submitted by user NewsCloud:
  Spotlight on Facebook Groups Affects Microsoft http://jeff.newscloud.com/2007/09/06/microsoft-digital-advertising-placing-ads-on-facebook-hate-groups/
  Facebook Exposes Advertisers To Hate Speech
http://jeff.newscloud.com/2007/09/03/facebook-brand-left-to-mercy-of-hate-groups/
  Facebook Apps Facing Delays and Uncertainties
http://www.idealog.us/2007/06/thanks_for_deve.html

idealog = personal spamblog, newscloud = spam blog, whom Google undoubtedly denied AdSense API access

Re:Slashdot quietly supports blogspam

[klenwell]

Google does in various ways, too. I run a couple adword campaigns for fun (bids all under 5 cents) and the only place where my ads show up as I far as I can tell are weird site like this:

http://icanhascheezburer.com/

Ok, not blogspam, but a linkfarm. But wouldn't be surprised if Google run a few hundred thousand spam blogs, too. (After all, they do own Blogger which, as much as I like it, is from a certain perspective little more than an extensive backwater of blogspam.)

In response to an email I sent them, a Google rep acknowledged these are Google sites. Fine, they provide an advertising space for cheapskates like me who wish to pay 2 cents a click. But I found it interesting that they don't identify these as Google-run sites, or even put the usual 'Ads by Google' tag with the ad blocks. And as their response shows, they don't make it exactly easy to disassociate yourself from this stuff if you're running a budget campaign:

Thank you for your email. I apologize for the delay in responding to your email. Please note that the site icanhascheezburer.com is not necessarily a link farm. This website is a part of our AdSense for domains program. AdSense for domains allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to display AdWords ads on their websites. AdSense for domains delivers targeted, conceptually related advertisements to parked domain pages by using Google's semantic technology to analyze and understand the meaning of the domain names. Note that ads shown on an an AdSense for domain site need not display the 'ads by Google' label. Ads on such sites only display the 'Sponsored links' label.

Please be assured that parked domain sites are included in the Google Network because of the value they add to both users and advertisers. Our internal data show that parked domain sites typically convert at rates equal to that of search and content pages.

We do realize that advertisers may not want their ads to show on such sites. Please note that turning off the Content Network will cause your ad to stop showing on all the sites on the Content Network including AdSense for domains.

Not sure if the API gives you any finer control over where your ads appear, but if it did, one effect of removing it from small advertisers might be consigning their ads to more wastelands like this.

Re:Slashdot quietly supports blogspam

[klenwell]

Whoops. Just noticed that this story was about AdSense, not AdWords, so strike the last comment about how this affects small advertisers.

That it's adsense make me wonder if this isn't really a measure designed to control or attack people abusing the API to propagate things like blogspam and link farms. It doesn't make sense to me that Google wouldn't really be able to accommodate smaller publishers since I'd guess that the majority of API resource usage is concentrated among the largest qualifying publishers.

100,000 pageviews

[MarkRose]

100,000 pageviews a day may seem small in comparison to some sites on the web, but that actually limits the number of sites to only a few thousand. I run a site that gets roughly 50,000 pageviews a day, and also ranks in the top 50,000 sites on alexa.com. If pageviews across sites are skewed exponentially towards the busiest sites, that means that roughly 10,000 or less sites are eligible to participate. Interesting.

Re:The Road

[suv4x4]

Maintaining a high level of customer service is an admirable goal. Why is this "evil"? Note, this isn't closing _adsense_ but the Adsense API.

Google should hire you as their Chief Newspeak Officer.

They screw the smaller ones anyway

[DreamerFi]

Every single smaller advertiser I know that has attempted to get some money through advertising for google had their account yanked a few weeks before it reached the point where google actually had to pay something. Every single one. And always without any way to challenge the yanking, as in "we detected click-fraud and YOU have to prove we're wrong, but we won't show you anything that may help you".

Guess who's permanently in my adblock filter?

Re:They screw the smaller ones anyway

[emurphy42]

As I understand it, anyone worried about that could force an early pay-out by closing their account (and then opening a new one if they decide it's worth continuing after all).

Anonymous Coward = Mark Zuckerberg?

[newscloud]

Why just complain about my Facebook posts? You don't seem to have a problem with: Looking Into Mozilla's Financial Success, Gates Foundation Revokes Pledge to Review Portfolio and Moglen on Social Justice and OSS. It's not like the NewsCloud logo is all stealth on my blog :)

Google AdSense has always paid regularly...

[newscloud]

I've never had any problem with ad revenue and payments. Just my experience...